Word: playgoer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
MARAT/SADE shreds the nerves, flays the skin and vivisects the psyche. In a display of directorial virtuosity, Peter Brook has expanded Playwright Peter Weiss's metaphor of the world as a madhouse, and the superb Royal Shakespeare players envelop the playgoer in a disturbing, enthralling theatrical experience...
...Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, by Peter Weiss, is a hypodermic needle plunged directly into the playgoer's emotional bloodstream. It hypnotizes the eye and bruises the ear. It shreds the nerves; it vivisects the psyche-and it may scare the living daylights out of more than a few playgoers...
...American actor, who almost invariably tries to humanize his role and to bridle the most outrageous farce with the halter of naturalistic plausibility. And Wycherley's characters cannot be played as people, since they are monsters in velvet and lace, transparencies of vice through which the playgoer is meant to view...
...doubt that pervades the playgoer is whether the real Pizarro suffered any such metaphysical anguish. There is no proof that he did. A deeper doubt is raised by the playwright's view of all life as a bleak cheat. Most men have stronger human ties than Shaffer's hero, and they take life on faith, with an acceptance of what is good, bad and mortal about it. The flamboyant staging of Royal Hunt widens the spectator's eye, but the confrontation of two heroes and two civilizations compels neither cheers nor tears...
There is always Barbara Harris to console the playgoer. But who is to console Barbara Harris...